teen, or twenty-one; a few more in page fifty-one; and some others in other places; containing expressions bearing on the house of commons, even as a body, which, if written as independent paragraphs by themselves, would be indefensible libeis; yet that you have a right to pass them over in judgment, provided the substance clearly appears to be a bona fide conclusion, arising from the honest investigation of a subject which it was lawful to investigate, and the questionable expressions, the visible effusion of a zealous temper, engaged in an honourable and legal pursuit. After this preparation I am not afraid to lay the book in its genuine state before you.

The pamphlet begins thus: "The house of commons has now given its final decision with regard to the merits and demerits of Mr. Hastings. The grand inquest of England have delivered their charges, and preferred their impeachment; their allegations are referred to proof; and from the appeal to the collective wisdom and justice of the nation in the supreme tribunal of the kingdom, the question comes to be determined, whether Mr. Hastings be guilty or not guilty?"

Now if immediately after what I have just read to you, (which is the first part charged by the information) the author had said: "Will accusations, built on such a baseless fabrick, prepossess the publick in favour of the impeachment? What credit can we give to multiplied and accumulated charges, when we find that they originate from mirepresentation and falsehood?" Every man would have been justified in pronouncing that he was attacking the house of commons, because the groundless accusations mentioned in the second sentence, could have no referrence but to the house itself, mentioned by name. in the first and only sentence which preceded it.

But, gentlemen, to your astonishment, I will now read what intervenes between these two passages; from which you will see, beyond a possibility of doubt, that the author never meant to calumniate the house of commons, but to say that the accusa

tion of Mr. Hastings before the whole house grew out of a committee of secrecy established some years before, and was afterwards brought forward by the spleen of private enemies, and a faction in the government. This will appear, not only from the grammatical construction of the words, but from what is better than words; from the meaning which a person writing as the friend of Mr. Hastings must be supposed to have intended to convey. Why should such a friend attack the house of commons? Will any man gravely tell me, that the house of commons, as a body, ever wished to impeach Mr. Hastings? Do we not all know that they constantly hung back from it, and hardly knew where they were, or what to do, when they found themselves entangled with it? My learned friend the attorney general is a member of this assembly; perhaps he may tell you by and by what he thought of it, and whether he ever marked any disposition in the majority of the commons hostile to Mr. Hastings. But why should I distress my friend by the question; the fact is sufficiently notorious; and what I am going to read from the book itself, (which is left out in the information) is too plain for controversy.

"Whatever may be the event of the impeachment, the proper exercise of such power is a valuable privilege of the British constitution, a formidable guardian of the publick liberty and the dignity of the nation. The only danger is, that from the influence of faction, and the awe which is annexed to great names, they may be prompted to determine before they inquire, and to pronounce judgment without examination."

Here is the clue to the whole pamphlet. The author trusts to and respects the house of commons, but is afraid their mature and just examination will be disturbed by faction.

Now, does he mean government by faction? Does he mean the majority of the commons by faction? Will the house, which is the prosecutor here, sanction that application of the phrase; or will the attorney general admit the majority to be the true innuendo of

faction? I wish he would; I should then have gained something at least by this extraordinary debate ; but I have no expectation of the sort; such a concession would be too great a sacrifice to any prosecution, at a time when every thing is considered as faction that disturbs the repose of the minister in parliament. But indeed, gentlemen, some things are too plain for argument. The author certainly means my friends, who, whatever qualifications may belong to them, must be contented with the appellation of faction while they oppose the minister in the house of commons; but the house, having given this meaning to the phrase of faction for its own purposes, cannot in decency change the interpretation in order to convict my client. I take that to be beyond the privilege of parliament.

The same bearing upon individual members of the commons, and not on the commons as a body, is obvious throughout. Thus after saying, in page 9, that the East India company had thanked Mr. Hastings for his meritorious services (which is unquestionably true) he adds, "That mankind would abide by their deliberate decision, rather than by the intemperate assertion of a committee."

This he writes after the impeachment was found by the commons at large; but he takes no account of their proceedings, imputing the whole to the original committee, i. e. the committee of secrecy; so called, I suppose, from their being the authors of twenty volumes in folio, which will remain a secret to all posterity, as nobody will ever read them. The same construction is equally plain from what immediately follows:

"The report of the committee of secrecy also states, that the happiness of the native inhabitants of India, has been deeply affected, their confidence in English faith and lenity shaken and impaired, and the character of this nation wantonly and wickedly degraded.

Here again you are grossly misled by the omission of near twenty-one pages. For the author though he

is here speaking of this committee by name which brought forward the charges to the notice of the house, and which he continues to do onward to the next selected paragraph; yet by arbitrarily sinking the whole context, he is taken to be speaking of the house as a body, when in the passage next charged by the information, he reproaches the accusers of Mr. Hastings. Although so far is he from considering them as the charges of the house of commons, that in the very same page he speaks of them as the charges, not even of the committee, but of Mr. Burke alone, the most active and intelligent member of that body; and as having been circulated in India by a relation of that gentleman.

"The charges of Mr. Burke have been carried to Calcutta, and carefully circulated in India."

Now if we were considering these passages of the work as calumniating a body of gentlemen, many of whom I must be supposed highly to respect, or as reflecting upon my worthy friend whose name I have mentioned, it would give rise to a totally different inquiry, which it is neither my duty nor yours to agitate; but surely the more that consideration obtrudes itself upon us, the more clearly it demonstrates, that the author's whole direction was against the individual accusers of Mr. Hastings, and not against the house of commons, which merely trusted to the matter they had collected.

Although, from a caution which my situation dictates as representing another, I have thought it my duty thus to point out to you the real intention of the author, as it appears by the fair construction of the work, yet I protest that in my own apprehension it is very immaterial whether he speaks of the committee or of the house, provided you will think the whole volume a bona fide defence of Mr. Hastings. This is the great point I am, by all my observations, endeavouring to establish, and which I think no man who reads the following short passages can doubt. Very intelligent persons have indeed considered them, if

founded in facts, to render every other amplification unnecessary. The first of them is as follows:

"It was known, at that time, that Mr. Hastings had not only descended from a publick to a private station, but that he was persecuted with accusations and impeachments. But none of these suffering millions have sent their complaints to this country: not a sigh nor a groan has been wafted from India to Britain. On the contrary, testimonies the most honourable to the character and merit of Mr. Hastings, have been transmitted by those very princes whom he has been supposed to have loaded with the deepest injuries."

Here, Gentlemen, we must be permitted to pause together a little; for in examining whether these pages were written as an honest answer to the charge of the commons, or as a prostituted defence of a notorious criminal, whom the writer believed to be guilty, truth becomes material at every step. For if in any instance he be detected of a wilful misrepresentation, he is no longer an object of your attention.

Will the attorney general proceed then to detect the hypocrisy of our author, by giving us some detail of the proofs by which these personal enormities have been established, and which the writer must be supposed to have been acquainted with? I ask this as the defender of Mr. Stockdale, not of Mr. Hastings, with whom I have no concern. I am sorry, indeed, to be so often obliged to repeat this protest; but I really feel myself embarrassed with those repeated coincidences of defence which thicken on me as I advance, and which were, no doubt, overlooked by the commons when they directed this interlocutory inquiry into his conduct.

I ask then, as counsel for Mr. Stockdale, whether, when a great state criminal is brought for justice at an immense expense to the publick, accused of the most oppressive cruelties, and charged with the robbery of -princes and the destruction of nations; it is not open to any one to ask, who are his accusers? What are the sources and the authorities of these shocking com